All Justice League's Biggest Villains Just Got a Superman-Beating Power-Up

Warning! Contains spoilers for Batman / Superman: World's Finest #26!

Summary Every major villain in DC has been powered up by evil imps from the fifth dimension, posing a real threat to Superman.

The evil imps are fanboys who idolize villains, using reality-warping powers to help them take down heroes.

Batman and Superman are powerless against this reality-ending threat, with the Justice League struggling to contain the chaos.

The Justice League has gone up against dozens of world-ending villains and multiverse-level threats, and they've always come out on top. But now, every major villain in DC has been given a power-up that would easily let them bring down Superman. It's going to take everything the heroes have to contain the madness that's been unleashed.

In Batman/Superman: World's Finest #26 by Mark Waid and Dan Mora, readers get to see a rather terrifying event unfold. After the fifth dimension comes under attack, Bat-Mite and Mister Mxyzptlk flee to Earth, seeking help from Batman and Superman.

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While Bat-Mite and Mister Mxyzptlk are explaining the situation, the Justice League calls them for help, stating disturbing things such as Sinestro and Kadabra having been powered up by mysterious sidekicks. These sidekicks are none other than evil imps from the fifth dimension that worship these heroes, which is very bad news for the larger DCU.

Related Batman & Superman Will Become Unimaginably Powerful Thanks to the Fifth Dimension - Theory Explained Batman and Superman's next adventure is going to take them to a higher dimension — where they might get the biggest power upgrade of their careers.

The Justice League's Worst Villains Are Powered Up by Fifth Dimensional Imps

Panels from the story "IMPeriled" by Waid, Cullen Bunn, Edwin Galmon, Lee Loughridge, and Steve Wands from Batman / Superman: World's Finest 2024 Annual

The imps of the fifth dimension are unbelievably powerful. As they're from a higher dimension than Earth, they're able to warp reality as they wish. Every single imp has this power, and rarely have heroes had to worry about any of the imps being evil. Most imps are simply fanboys of a certain character, like Bat-Mite idolizing Batman or Mister Mxyzptlk caring for Superman. While Mister Mxyzptlk's way of expressing adoration is questionable, there's no denying he's never been actively malicious or evil.

Nightwing recently "earned" his own impish counterpart, known affectionately as Nite-Mite.

But this doesn't seem to apply to the imps who idolize villains, and now they're using their reality-warping powers to help their idols take down the heroes. While readers haven't gotten to see the full extent of the chaos being caused by these evil imps, it's not hard to imagine what's going on. Readers already got to see something similar during the infamous Emperor Joker story, wherein the Joker managed to steal the power of Mister Mxyzptlk. This turned the Joker into a reality-warping god, which allowed him to do quite literally whatever he wanted

Evil Imps Are a Reality-Ending Threat for the DC Universe

Even Superman was powerless to defeat the powered-up Joker, and while the villains of the DC Universe aren't exactly on this level now, they do have creatures with this level of power backing them up. While the Justice League has dealt with villains being powered up before, those villains have never been as powerful as a fifth-dimensional imp. Batman and Superman will be completely powerless to stop this attack, and the rest of the Justice League are struggling to hold their own against these new threats. The only hope the Justice League has is finding a way to banish these imps back to the fifth dimension before they destroy reality.

Batman / Superman: World's Finest #26 is available April 16th from DC Comics!